Don't Make the Same Mistakes I Did
by MaverickLover2
Summary: There's always lessons to be learned.


Don't Make the Same Mistakes

Beauregard must have been about fifteen or sixteen when he came to me with a request. "Pa, can we talk?"

I was in my office doin' paperwork at the time, but I'm always happy to stop that, especially for one of my kids. "What's on your mind, junior?"

Now you have to understand somethin'. Beauregard is my boy, the third oldest and the firstborn son, and even though we named him for my Pappy, we call him junior. It's a nickname that he declared he wanted when he was about nine, right after Tim was born. I think he was tryin' to cement his place in the family. Junior gave him stature.

Even though he was just a wee lad, he decided that as the oldest male in the family, he should have been named after his pappy, instead of mine. That would have made him Bartley Jameson Maverick, Junior. The nickname stuck, and after a while everybody called him junior.

"I'd like you to promise me something."

Beauregard was something of a character. Always had a mind of his own, and he wouldn't hesitate to give you a piece of it if he thought you were tryin' to put somethin' over on him. I think that's one of the reasons the two oldest, twin girls Maudie and Belle, never gave him any trouble. First of all they were only two years older than him, and besides that they were girls. All he had to do to charm them was smile; he had almost the same dimples Brother Bret has. All I can tell you is that Pappy had really strong genes.

Junior was always pretty much self-sufficient, so it was a real surprise for him to come to me and ask me to promise him somethin'. Naturally I was inclined to do so. "What is it that you want me to promise you, boy?"

He sat there for several minutes before he got up the courage to give me his answer. "When I'm done with school and I'm ready to leave the ranch and Little Bend, I want you to promise that you won't try to stop me, or make me feel guilty like Pappy did to you and Uncle Bret."

"Do you really think I'd do that to you, Beauregard?"

Junior's eyes got wide when I called him Beauregard. True, it was his given name, but I only used it when I had somethin' really important to say. "We . . .ll, maybe not, Pa, but I want to make sure that we understand each other."

He wants to make sure we understand each other? This from my fifteen-year-old son? This is the boy that never wanted for anything, that always had a really nice house to live in and his own room that he didn't have to share with anybody, clothes that fit him instead of his brother's hand-me-downs, and plenty of food on the table for each and every meal. He had his own pony by the time he was five, a father who was at home every night, and a mother. That last one might have been the biggest of all – a mother.

I couldn't help it, I got angry. Oh, not screamin' and yellin' angry . . . more disturbed angry because he didn't understand how good he had it. In front of me stood my son, my beloved boy who up until this very moment had never caused me one moments worth of pain, and he was telling me just how it was gonna be when he was ready to leave home. If I had told my father that when I was fifteen, he would have wailed . . . well, let's just put it this way. I wouldn't have sat down for a week or two.

"Sit down, my boy. I want to explain some things to you."

Junior nervously took a chair. He had no idea what I was gonna say to him, and frankly, neither did I. I started with the first thing I thought he should understand. "When I was your age, I almost robbed a bar, with my friends Earnie Night and Fred Taylor. We talked about it, we planned it, we had it all worked out. We were goin' over to Claytonville and hit The Providence Club, which wasn't anywhere near as big and fancy as it is now. We were all set to go, but at the last minute, somethin' stopped me. I still don't know if it was fate or good luck or sheer terror, but I decided not to go and Fred stayed with me. Earnie begged and pleaded with us to go with him; it was easy pickin's, he said.

"We stuck to our guns, or our fear of the unknown. Earnie plunged ahead with the ill-conceived plan anyway, and the next morning we found out that everything had gone sideways. Nobody was where they were supposed to be, and Earnie was shot and killed. Me and Fred were sick about it. And the worst part was we had to pretend we didn't know nothin' about it. If we hadn't, John Law could have gotten us as accessories.

"Pappy never asked me much about the robbery and Earnie's death. Believe you me, I was glad that I was still at home and not out on the road, because we'd have been in jail so fast it woulda made your head spin."

"That's a scary story alright, Pa, but what has it got to do with me?" I saw confusion on the boy's face and knew I had to explain it to him.

"Don't you see," I told the boy, "if we'd been anywhere but our home town, where we were both well known, the long arm of the law wouldn't have let it go. They wouldn't know us, or our pappys, and they would have questioned us until we couldn't stand it anymore, and we'd admitted to everything. Because they knew us, they let it go. And it wouldn't a made any difference that we were only fifteen. You can't always rely on somebody believin' every word you say."

"Yes., sir, I can see where that might be a problem, but what does it have to do with me?" Junior shifted uneasily in his chair.

"I made some big mistakes in my life, junior, and I'm tellin' you about 'em so you won't make the same ones. I ain't always been a horse rancher, you know."

""No, you were a roving gambler. That much I know."

"But all you see is the good side; the bright lights, the pretty women, the freedom to go anywhere you want. There's a dark side, too, and that's what I'm tryin' to tell you about." I took a moment to watch him, to see if he was really listening to me. He seemed to be. "When Momma died she left me a pair of gold and black opal cufflinks."

Junior perked up at that. "The ones you still wear?"

I nodded. "That's right. They're precious to me. Bret and me were really broke; we needed to make enough money somehow so we could get back into our usual haunts. We were playin' poker in a mining camp named Chloride and everything seemed to be goin' our way. I went off to help somebody one day and didn't get back until late; by that time Bret had been swindled out of every cent he had and, knowing that he wasn't gonna lose the last hand with his king-high straight, went into my saddlebags and extracted the cufflinks. He lost to a full house.

"When I got back to camp I was too tired to talk, so I went to sleep not knowin' what had happened. The next morning Bret told me everything, and I stopped speaking to him. I packed my bag, saddled my horse, and rode out, with my brother beggin' me the whole time not to go. I ignored his pleas and rode all the way into Prescott. I was determined not to go back. My brother, my only brother, had betrayed me.

"That's where I met Anderson Garrett. Anderson was in his prime just then, and everything was first class with him. It was a ride with nothing but the very best, and he took me on it with him. He explained to me what it was like to lose your brother, just as Anderson had lost his. I was so moved; he finally made me see that family was more important than anything, and when I left Prescott I returned to Chloride. I was back in the mining camp just in time to hear gunshots go off. By the time I got to the 'saloon' tent I was sure Bret was dead and it took me some time to find he was wounded but alive. Was I ever glad to hear the wound he'd suffered wasn't fatal. And my brother had managed to uncover the con game bein' run by the bartender and one of the poker players. Needless to say, I got my cufflinks back. But the most important thing was that I got my brother back."

"What were you thinkin' when you left Chloride, Pa? That you were just gonna go on without Uncle Bret? And what would you have done if he was dead when you got back? Grandpa would have never forgiven you. Pretty foolish, don't you think?"

"Yeah, Junior, it was pretty foolish. But I was young and headstrong, and I did foolish things. And your grandpa wouldn't have to kill me; I would have died of shame and grief. Don't you see the lesson here for both of us, boy?"

"Well, yeah, Pa. You'd have to be blind not to. Ain't nothin' worth family."

"That's right. And don't you ever forget it." I paused again, hoping that what I was telling him was sinking in. "When I was a young man and had been on my own a while, Pappy called me and Bret and Beau back to the house to tell us about a saloon we'd inherited . . . The Three Mavericks. It was up in Silver Creek, Montana, and it was a bit of a surprise. See, we didn't know that Pappy and Ben had a sister named Jessie, and that's who the saloon belonged to."

"Wait, Pa, how could you not know that you had an aunt? Didn't Grandpa or Uncle Ben ever mention her? She lived in Montana all those years and nobody was the wiser? Doesn't make you all sound too bright, Pa."

I chose to go on, ignoring Junior. "Like I said, Aunt Jessie owned the saloon. Problem was she had a common-law-husband by the name of Edgar Pike who thought the saloon was his. He hired three thugs to convince the Mavericks that they should go home and leave everything to him, and yours truly just happened to be the recipient of the pistol-whipping they laid on one of us to prove their point. I came real close to dyin', but that's not what got me in trouble. See, months later when I could finally walk again, I rode out to Edgar's house with Bret and Beau. And I was the one that threatened to kill him."

"You didn't, Pa? Right out loud for God and everybody to hear? Didn't you know what kind of trouble you could be in?"

"Oh yes, my boy, I did. And when Edgar turned up dead, guess who they blamed? Course it didn't hurt that the thugs had planted evidence to frame me, but still, I was the one who had done the threatening. And everybody knew it. So I got arrested, tried, convicted, and sentenced to hang. I watched them build the gallows from my jail cell window. If it hadn't been for Bret and Beau I would have swung on that gallows. Matter of fact, I was part way up the steps when Bret came chargin' in with the evidence to set me free."

"Gosh, Pa, I never knew . . . "

"Learn not to make the mistake I made. Don't say nothin' that can get you in trouble. Matter of fact, don't say nothin' at all."

"Gee whiz, Pa, you sure went thru a lot of stuff."

"That ain't the half of it, junior. I got a telegram that Bret had been killed in a gunfight in Dodge City  
and went there as fast as I could. Because they'd buried him by the time I got there, all they could show me was a grave on Boot Hill. I tried to find out who'd murdered him and rebuild my life, and for weeks I played the part of a crooked gambler to get to the truth. When I finally did, and the two men who were responsible were dead, I found out that Bret was alive! How happy I was! But I learned somethin' from that whole encounter . . . don't believe somethin' that people tell you without proof."

"So you really did think he was dead and buried? Where was he all that time?"

"He was at Doc's house because Doc didn't know if he was gonna live or die. Nobody knew he was alive; everybody grieved for him. Doc sent an unclaimed body to be buried as 'Bret Maverick.'"

"How did you deal with it Pa, thinkin' Uncle Bret was dead? And what did you get mixed up in to try and find his killers?"

"Somethin' I don't wanna be involved in ever again. A crooked protection racket, aimed at the children of the town."

"Gee, it musta been hard to play crooked when you're not."

"It was hard, son. But nowhere near as physically hard as what I went through when I trusted a man I thought was a friend. He was out for revenge for what he believed my father had done to his father. Without my knowledge or consent he got me addicted to black opium, and it took everything Pappy and Doralice had in them to get me off it. It was weeks before my body could function without it, and months before my mind could. I learned a hard lesson from that one, son."

"It had to be bein' careful about who you trust. But how can you know who to trust and who not to trust? That's gotta be hard to figure out, Pa."

"Now you're catchin' on to things, boy. I made the mistake of trustin' the wrong person."

"Gee, Pa, you been through a lot that I never knew about. You got any more things you think I should know?"

"Just one more, son, and it was delicious and deadly. Don't be kissin' strange women. It can get you hanged."

Beauregard was definitely stunned by that one. "Hanged, Pa?"

"It went somethin' like this, Beau – I'd been stuck for several days in a ramshackle cabin, tryin' to avoid bein' drowned in a torrential rainstorm. Out of nowhere the most beautiful woman rides up, throws her arms around me and kisses me passionately. There was a uniformed man in pursuit of her, and when he got within earshot she said something to me and called me 'Broderick.' He was a military man sent out to find her and bring her back to her ex-fiancé's home outside of Fort St. Rafeal, Louisiana. Her name was Kate Doucet and she'd run away with her lover, Broderick Michaels. Michaels was convicted of sedition and sentenced to hang, and since she had called me Broderick . . . so I was dragged back to the house and thrown in a cell in the basement. The ex-fiancé was determined to hang Michaels, and since Kate had identified me as Michaels he dragged me out in the dead of night and tried to do so. The rope was around my neck when he was prevented by his father, the fort's commandant. He was the one that eventually believed my story, and freed me. So I think you can see why it's not wise to go around kissin' women you don't know."

I don't know if he was worn out by the time I got done with the stories, but I sure was. But I had to put one final recap on the evenin's lessons. "So, what have you learned from the mistakes I've made in my lifetime?" He looked at me kind of sideways before givin' me his answer.

"Well, let's see:

You're safer in your hometown than you are on the road.

Nothin's as important as family.

Be careful of what you say.

Don't believe nothin' without gettin' proof.

Be careful who you trust.

Don't be kissin' strange women."

"I'm glad that you listened to what I had to say, junior. Now, what is it you wanted to ask me?"

Beauregard stood up and smiled. He kissed me quickly on the cheek, then we shook hands. "Nothin', Pa, nothin."


End file.
